James Whitman

Mackem Craic

Mackem Craic is a new radio show / podcast. The show is a comedy drama, staged to sound like a local radio phone-in, but with a supernatural twist — the former host is trolling the show from beyond the grave.

Joining me for this project are the ferociously talented Jay Sykes (producer) and Corinne Kilvington (director), as well as a terrific trio of local actors — Dale Jewitt (Craig), Sarah Boulter (Lauren) and Steven Stobbs (George).

We have created a pilot episode of the show, which we will broadcast for the first time on Spark FM at 10pm on Saturday, 19th November 2016. We will then upload the pilot episode to our SoundCloud account, for anyone who misses our maiden broadcast.

Additionally, we created loads of opportunities for young people and community groups to get involved in the show. I ran writing workshops across Sunderland and South Tyneside, helping young (and not-so-young) writers create content for the show. We then ran six studio workshops at Spark FM. During these sessions, Corinne taught a taster class on vocal technique and Jay showed us his meticulous editing process. Best of all, we recorded some of the scenes from our writing workshops, many of which went straight into the pilot episode.

This first phase of Mackem Craic is pretty much done now, but we’re not stopping here. We hope our pilot episode will lead to a full season in 2017, so stay tuned for more Mackem Craic in the near future.